Google Announces Unified Hangouts Messaging for iOS Android and Web

The "Bable" project created to coral all the Google messaging properties gets an official name, goes live during the Google I/O Keynote.

Google announced a ton of stuff during the opening I/O keynote. Since the keynote was 3+ hours long, they have room to cram it all in with time to spare for questions from the geeky audience.

One of the announcements I was looking for was if Google would ever do something about all the messaging capabilities spread out among its many communication properties. Well, during the uber-long keynote, Google announced its Hangouts messaging service that will take the place of Google+ Hangouts/Messenger and Google Talk/Chat for the web and on Android and iOS devices.

Hangouts brings over the video chat that was popular with the Goggle+ Hangouts crowd and adds its own unique features like turning any conversation into a video chat instantly, storing all messages in the cloud and letting users go back through history, and the ability to message friends even though they may not be connected.

Probably the biggest feature (for me) is the fact that when communication is started on one device, all future alerts are muted on all other devices - Gets rid of redundant message counts. You can also leave a conversation on one device and pick right back up at the same spot on another device.

I'll admit, this is version 1 of Hangouts, but there were some things I personally would've liked implemented: